Earlier this month, cleantech startup Clearloop broke ground on a 1‑megawatt solar project outside Jackson, Tennessee that stakes out a bold new definition of solar’s carbon-reduction value. It’s the first utility-scale solar project in the country to be partially financed by selling the carbon emissions it will displace over its lifetime. These transactions will not take the customary form of renewable energy credits that average out that value over time, but rather of carbon offsets that are directly related to the power grid the project is connected to. In more specific terms, about $400,000, or roughly one-third of the project’s cost, was raised via the sale of offsets for nearly 60 million pounds of carbon emissions.
Wow, this is so much more 'additional' than the often tokenistic measures I see with RECs